There are many ways on how to acquire bitcoin. For instance in the Philippines, Bitcoin is a new stuff to many people. Some of my friends there were lucky to have bitcoin since 2013. You can ask someone or your friends who has bitcoin to transmit some for you in exchange of cash. But if you don’t have connections like you’re an island when it comes to bitcoin, then you better start it yourself.

Signup to https://www.coins.ph – this is the basic and easiest way to have bitcoin in the Philippines. Click the create account on the menu. Type in your mobile number or you can opt to use your email instead. Then type your password. Make sure your password is not easy to guess but easy to remember. Take note that you’ll keep your money on this platform, and the only key for your wallet is your password. You will see something like this:

After that, a 6 digit verification code will be sent to your mobile or email(whichever you used to sign-up).

After verifying your login, you will be redirected to this page, where it states that your account was created. As you can see, there are steps to be done to fully utilize coins.ph services. You can skip this for a moment but you cannot transact anything in coins.ph like buying bitcoin which is our primary objective. It will take 3 days after finishing these 3 steps in order for your account to be verified.

Email verification – Just type in your email address then click next.

A verification code will be sent to your specified email.

Open your email account and in your inbox, you should see an email from coins.ph

After inputting your verification code, you will have this screen but it doesn’t end there. You should take a selfie and upload a legal ID for complete verification. A complete verification will enable you to fully utilize coins.ph.

Now that you have verified your email address, you can now deposit a maximum of 2000 Php but you cannot withdraw money. Please refer to the image below:

Level 1: after email verification.

Level 2: after phone verification, Identity verification through government ID and selfie verification. This is enough for Bitcoin starters.

Level 3: You can accomplish this after you send a billing information from your current address.

I will not cover the business stuff.

What now?

What else can you do with your coins.ph account? A lot of stuff. Coins.ph offers billing and remittance services. You can pay different utility and other types of bills, prepaid credits for your phone, shop from their catalog and receive money from your love ones abroad. Yes, this is what I like in coins.ph and bitcoin. Philippines is a home of talented, smart and skillful OFWs. For example, your parents somewhere abroad will send you money. They don’t have to use remittance services that requires bigger fees. Using bitcoin, you can receive a big amount of money anywhere for a minimal fee then cash it out through coins.ph.

Others use coins.ph as a stepping stone to their cryptocurrency investment track. They will buy bitcoin then transfer it to other trading services like kraken, bitrex, etc.

Cashing in (deposit)

Depositing money in your coins.ph account can be done with different channels like these:

Before, I have tried depositing 10,000Php at 7-11 and they got a fee of 200Php from me. Transaction fees depends on how much you will deposit. I also tried cash-in at Cebuana Lhuillier for a fee of 40Php only for 10,000Php deposit. In cashing in, you may opt to choose straight to peso wallet or bitcoin wallet. Cash-in straight to bitcoin wallet may cost you a little fee. Cashing in looks like this:

Cash-in with 7-11:

Just show this to 7-11 counter, then an “ate” or “kuya” will process this. They might scan the barcode from your mobile phone or just give them the number. You will receive the money you deposited in no-time.

Cash-in with Cebuana Lhuillier:

With Cebuana Lhuillier, you will fill-out a form as instructed here:

You will also receive your deposited cash in instant.

Sending bitcoin with Coins.ph

On the left side of your coins.ph dashboard, you will see 2 wallets provided for you. Be aware that these wallets has different address.

To be able to send bitcoin to other wallets or other person, you should know their bitcoin address. A bitcoin address is a string of random characters (read more about addresses).

First you have to choose on which wallet you will get money from by clicking PHP or BTC.

Click the send button then you will see this form (take note of the source wallet).

After sending a bitcoin, you shall wait for about 10 minutes or more for the transaction to be completed. Why 10minutes? Because that is the standard time when the miner fully confirmed a transaction. Read more about bitcoin here.

Sending bitcoin has a minimal fee of 0.05%. This fee is for miners(know more about mining here). Coins.ph platform will ask you for the rate of fee you are willing to pay. Lower fee will take much longer to take effect(about 30min) and higher fee is much faster. I don’t have idea how fast is the higher fee because I haven’t tried that. This kind of prioritization is built in to the Bitcoin protocol. If you have complains, find Satoshi Nakamoto. But this is fair enough because miners exerts efforts to arrange our transactions.

Receiving Money or Bitcoin with Coins.ph

Coins.ph gives you two options: receive money or bitcoin. If the other party sends to your peso address using their bitcoin wallet, the bitcoin they will send to you will be automatically converted to peso. To receive bitcoin, you shall give your bitcoin or peso address to the other party. Choose a wallet then to see your wallet address, click the QR code-like tiny icon on the upper right corner of the wallet details. Your address looks like this:

What is the QR code for?

Mobile wallet services has a feature of using its camera to scan QR code. Because typing the long random characters again and again is a tedious task. You can also print this and show it to someone whenever you ask for bitcoin.